Gets or sets a value indicating whether pressing the TAB key in a multiline text box control types a TAB character in the control instead of moving the focus to the next control in the tab order. (Inherited from TextBoxBase.)

Gets a value indicating whether the caller must call an invoke method when making method calls to the control because the caller is on a different thread than the one the control was created on. (Inherited from Control.)

Invalidates the specified region of the control (adds it to the control's update region, which is the area that will be repainted at the next paint operation), and causes a paint message to be sent to the control. (Inherited from Control.)

Invalidates the specified region of the control (adds it to the control's update region, which is the area that will be repainted at the next paint operation), and causes a paint message to be sent to the control. (Inherited from Control.)

Invalidates the specified region of the control (adds it to the control's update region, which is the area that will be repainted at the next paint operation), and causes a paint message to be sent to the control. Optionally, invalidates the child controls assigned to the control. (Inherited from Control.)

Invalidates the specified region of the control (adds it to the control's update region, which is the area that will be repainted at the next paint operation), and causes a paint message to be sent to the control. Optionally, invalidates the child controls assigned to the control. (Inherited from Control.)

With the TextBox control, the user can enter text in an application. This control has additional functionality that is not found in the standard Windows text box control, including multiline editing and password character masking.

Typically, a TextBox control is used to display, or accept as input, a single line of text. You can use the Multiline and ScrollBars properties to enable multiple lines of text to be displayed or entered. Set the AcceptsTab and AcceptsReturn properties to true to enable greater text manipulation in a multiline TextBox control.

Note

You must set the Multiline property to true to adjust the height of the TextBox control. You can adjust the height by setting the Size property.

You can limit the amount of text entered into a TextBox control by setting the MaxLength property to a specific number of characters. TextBox controls can also be used to accept passwords and other sensitive information. You can use the PasswordChar property to mask characters entered in a single-line version of the control. Use the CharacterCasing property to enable the user to type only uppercase, only lowercase, or a combination of uppercase and lowercase characters into the TextBox control.

To scroll the contents of the TextBox until the cursor (caret) is within the visible region of the control, you can use the ScrollToCaret method. To select a range of text in the text box, you can use the Select method.

To restrict text from being entered in a TextBox control, you can create an event handler for the KeyDown event in order to validate each character entered in the control. You can also restrict all entry of data in a TextBox control by setting the ReadOnly property to true.

Note

Most of the functionality of the TextBox control is inherited from the TextBoxBase class.

Using the TextBox control with visual styles enabled will cause the incorrect handling of surrogate fonts.

The following code example creates a multiline TextBox control with vertical scroll bars. This example uses the AcceptsTab, AcceptsReturn, and Dock properties to make the multiline text box control useful for creating text documents.